Goose-Pie House was a small English Baroque house built by John Vanbrugh in Whitehall, London, in 1701. The house was demolished in 1898. The site now lies under the southeast corner of the Old War Office Building on Whitehall, near the Gurkha Memorial statue on Horse Guards Avenue.
Vanbrugh made his first essays in architecture earlier in the 1690s, when he was engaged by Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle to design his palace at Castle Howard in Yorkshire. Vanbrugh was a well-known playwright, and was friends with the prominent Whigs through his membership of the Kit-Cat Club, but he had no previous formal education in drawing or architectural design.
After most of the Palace of Whitehall was destroyed by a fire in 1698, the King William III granted Vanbrugh permission to build a house in the grounds of the ruined palace in July 1700, in the location where the lodgings of the Vice-Chamberlain – Vanbrugh's friend Peregrine Bertie – had been.
Vanbrugh's small, two-storey house was constructed in 1701 to his own novel design, reusing brick and stone from the ruined palace. It stood on a plot approximately 60 foot (18 m) east to west, fronting the Great Court at Whitehall, and 85 foot (26 m) from north to south.
The house had 7 bays in its main elevation, but departed from the convention of having a main elevation in one plane, with rectangular windows in identical bays. The main block of Vanbrugh's house was formed of five bays. The central three bays were rusticated on the first and second floors, and each floor had three large round-arched windows, spanned by an iron-railed balcony on the first floor. To each side, a further bay projected on both floors, like a tower, with rusticated quoins and rectangular window openings. The outermost bays, in plain ashlars, projected further on the ground floor only, with a broken triangular pediment above an opening with a round-headed arch supported by pillars. The first floor of the outer bays was set back, and built of brick without stone facings.
Although small, the house was in a prominent position, and drew attention to Vanbrugh's architectural aspirations. While conventional town houses of modest size were usually terraced, Vanbrugh's house was free-standing. Its size and proportions, and peculiar design, with unusual mix of elevations and projections, led the house to be unflatteringly likened by Jonathan Swift to a "goose-pie", a dish known for its odd shape. In a poem of 1703, "Vanbrugh's House", Swift wrote: "At length they in the rubbish spy // A thing resembling a goose-pie." The disparaging nickname stuck. (Swift returned to his abuse of Vanbrugh in a poem in 1708, writing: "Van’s genius, without thought or lecture, // Is hugely turn’d to architecture".)
Vanbrugh repeated the motif of three long round-headed windows at Castle Howard, and on the corner pavilions at Blenheim Palace. He repeated the rusticated central block with plainer projecting wings at Seaton Delaval Hall.
Vanbrugh died in the house in 1726, and the lease was inherited by his wife. She left the property to her niece Mrs Philippia Goldsworthy for life, and then to her daughter Miss Martha Carolina Goldsworthy, but they sold it to Edward Vanbrugh. The house was acquired by Charles Stuart in 1793, and left to his widow Dame Anna Louisa Stuart. It was occupied by their son, Charles Stuart, 1st Baron Stuart de Rothesay, until it was bought by the United Service Institute in 1845 to expand its adjacent museum. The museum was transferred to the Banqueting House in 1895, and the house was demolished in 1898 to allow construction of the Old War Office Building.
Nicholas Hawksmoor was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principal architects of the time, Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, and contributed to the design of some of the most notable buildings of the period, including St Paul's Cathedral, Wren's City of London churches, Greenwich Hospital, Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. Part of his work has been correctly attributed to him only relatively recently, and his influence has reached several poets and authors of the twentieth century.
Blackheath is an area in Southeast London, straddling the border of the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the London Borough of Lewisham. Historically within the county of Kent, it is located 1-mile (1.6 km) northeast of Lewisham, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south of Greenwich and 6.4 miles (10.3 km) southeast of Charing Cross, the traditional centre of London.
Castle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, within the civil parish of Henderskelfe, located 15 miles (24 km) north of York. It is a private residence and has been the home of the Carlisle branch of the Howard family for more than 300 years. Castle Howard is not a fortified structure, but the term "castle" is sometimes used in the name of an English country house that was built on the site of a former castle.
Sir John Vanbrugh was an English architect, dramatist and herald, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. He was knighted in 1714.
Inigo Jones was the first significant architect in England in the early modern period, and the first to employ Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings. As the most notable architect in England, Jones was the first person to introduce the classical architecture of Rome and the Italian Renaissance to Britain. He left his mark on London by his design of single buildings, such as the Queen's House which is the first building in England designed in a pure classical style, and the Banqueting House, Whitehall, as well as the layout for Covent Garden square which became a model for future developments in the West End. He made major contributions to stage design by his work as a theatrical designer for several dozen masques, most by royal command and many in collaboration with Ben Jonson.
Palladian architecture is a European architectural style derived from the work of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). What is today recognised as Palladian architecture evolved from his concepts of symmetry, perspective and the principles of formal classical architecture from ancient Greek and Roman traditions. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Palladio's interpretation of this classical architecture developed into the style known as Palladianism.
Easton Neston is a large grade I listed country house in the parish of Easton Neston near Towcester in Northamptonshire, England. It was built by William Fermor, 1st Baron Leominster (1648–1711), in the Baroque style to the design of the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor.
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English Baroque is a term used to refer to modes of English architecture that paralleled Baroque architecture in continental Europe between the Great Fire of London (1666) and roughly 1720, when the flamboyant and dramatic qualities of Baroque art were abandoned in favour of the more chaste, rule-based Neo-classical forms espoused by the proponents of Palladianism.
The Banqueting House, on Whitehall in the City of Westminster, central London, is the grandest and best-known survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting houses, constructed for elaborate entertaining. It is the only large surviving component of the Palace of Whitehall, the residence of English monarchs from 1530 to 1698. The building is important in the history of English architecture as the first structure to be completed in the classical style of Palladian architecture which was to transform English architecture.
The year 1701 in architecture involved some significant events.
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Roger Morris was an English architect whose connection with Colen Campbell brought him to the attention of Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke, with whom Morris collaborated on a long series of projects.
Nicholas Stone was an English sculptor and architect. In 1619 he was appointed master-mason to James I, and in 1626 to Charles I.
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Charles Vanbrugh was an officer of the Royal Navy and member of parliament for Plymouth.